and to draw you back; make not yourselves deaf, for it speaks within you for your good. God the Holy Ghost teaches your heart to lead you the closer to Christ. Though sometimes Satan may corrupt conscience, though it is not a perfect guide, yet the more we obey its earlier tones, the less will Satan be able to pervert it, the more entirely will it be instructed by the Spirit of God, the more we may trust and follow it. Listen then to your heart, to that first judge which is on the judgment seat within you, that you may escape the wrath of that greater Judge who will sift you to the very core, who knoweth all things, and will avenge Himself on all His enemies.

JOHN HENRY PARKER, OXFORD AND LONDON.

Tracts for the Christian Seasons.

THIRD SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY.

The Holy Angels.

I REMEMBER as well as though it happened yesterday, that, when quite a boy, one fine summer Sunday evening, I was sauntering round the old churchyard of my native village. The sun was going down with every promise of a glorious morrow; the grey church-tower stood above me bathed in a rich and mellow glow of light; the peaceful meadow, from which the grass had been newly mown, lay before me, and through it ran the deep clear stream with its placid flow, reflecting back on its surface the tall elm-trees beneath whose boughs when children we had our bower. I was alone; and my mind was bent upon more serious thoughts than usual: and the whole scene was in perfect harmony with my feelings. I had been recently confirmed by the bishop; that very morning had witnessed my enrolment among the privileged band of the

Church's communicants; at the hands of the clergyman in company of my father and my mother I had received for the first time the holy Sacrament of my Saviour's Body and Blood. Never shall I forget the awful thrilling happiness of that day; how with fear and trembling, mingled with gratitude and fervent devotion, I had knelt before God's altar. Never shall I forget how keenly I felt all that the lines express—

O agony of wavering thought

When sinners first so near are brought !

It is my Maker-dare I stay?

My Saviour-dare I turn away ?

:

The solemn services in which on that day I had engaged, you may suppose had not faded from my memory by the evening. Yes, well I remember the day it was this very day just eighteen years ago. I remember it, it was the third Sunday after Trinity; the words of the Gospel for the day seemed to soothe my excited spirit, and cheer me at that awful moment, while they raised in my mind a train of anxious thoughts, which I knew not how to explain to myself, and which in spite of my efforts to get rid of them, would still hover round me. They were the concluding words of the Gospel for the day, which had left this deep impression

on my mind, "Likewise I say unto you, there is joy among the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth." The clergyman had preached from the Gospel on the subject of true repentance; he had encouraged us to it by noting how earnestly God searches for the piece of silver lost from His treasury; for the wandering sheep which strayed from His fold; how He waited not for the return of the repentant prodigal, but went out and met him when he was yet a great way off, and "fell on his neck and kissed him." He had told us to mark well how that the chapter whence the Gospel for the day was selected, gives the greatest encouragement to the true repentance of Christians who have fallen into sin. I think he called it a Gospel within the Gospel; and he ended by solemnly inviting all the penitents of his flock to turn again to the Father whom they had offended, to draw near to His most holy feast, and there as sons to seek to have the pardon of their sins sealed to them in the holy Eucharist. And though he did not draw out the subject into detail, yet he added by way of encouragement that not only all good and holy men rejoiced at the accession of one new warrior to the army of their Lord, at the return of each single penitent who had strayed,

but that this joy was spread far beyond the Church on earth, and reached the holy angels in heaven.

It was on the same Sunday evening, that, as I have said, I was wandering round the old churchyard, when the clergyman entered the wicket gate and crossed the churchyard in his way to his cottage. After the interchange of a few passing remarks, upon the state of the poor sick woman whom he had been visiting, I told him openly the subject of my thoughts. We had often talked together on sacred subjects before; it had been mainly by him that I had been prepared for the solemn rite of confirmation; a season when many a clergyman can find access even to those who at other times would refuse it; and I felt that I could speak to him with a freer heart and fuller confidence than to any one beside him in the world.

Let us sit down here,' he said calmly, in answer to my first word of enquiry, and employ the remainder of this glorious evening in thinking on the subject which seems so deeply to occupy your mind. We will converse upon the nature of the holy angels and their relation to the race of man, as far at least as it is revealed to us in the Bible. It is the subject on which I